A
purposefully obtuse and bizarre psychological mystery
film about parallel realities directed by Jacques
Rivette ("Secret Defense"/"La Belle Noiseuse"/"The
Story of Marie and Julien"), that's mostly rambling,
meandering and nonsensical. Rivette co-writes with Eduardo
De Gregorio and Suzanne Schiffman. The acclaimed
French director reportedly had a nervous breakdown
upon completion of the film. It sat on the shelf and
wasn't released until two years later in 1983. That it
almost redeems its long haul of 160 minutes and its
confusing head trip story line by coming up with a
beautifully filmed climax, maybe is reason enough for
not jumping ship and sticking it out until the end.

A pair of musicians, the
bassist Barre Phillips and clarinetist John Surman,
improvise a doleful jazz to open things. The musicians
return periodically throughout the film, and might be
the best thing about this turkey.

Andy Warhol fave, the scruffy Joe
Dallesandro, plays New Yorker Ben Phillipps, while
hippie-looking Maria Schneider plays the Parisian
mystery woman Léo Hoffmann. They meet in a Paris
countryside hotel in search of the elusive Elisabeth
(Danièle Gegauff) after receiving separate
telegrams from her to meet there. She's the
ex-girlfriend of Ben and Léo's missing sister.
The strangers wonder why Lisa isn't there to meet them.
But finally connect in the countryside following a few
scavenger hunt like clues of hunting her down, and we
learn the girls' dad stole four million francs and
probably faked his death in an airplane crash. This
begins a labyrinthine
plot, as Lisa is kidnapped and her friend Shirley (Sylvie Matton) appears on
the scene with more confusing information for us to
digest.

For most of the film Ben and
Léo, who has the combination to the safe where
dad hid the loot but no knowledge of where is the safe,
playfully try to get acquainted and search for the
missing Lisa and the dough as if they were tripping.
They search empty houses and such when not running in
the woods or in the dunes. The result is an overlong,
dull, padded and pretentious film that is a chore to sit
through. Though the goofy leads are as appealing as
babies, but even this cuteness grows tiresome as the
ponderous film plods on with barely a concern that it's
such a sketchy and lazily put together work. There are
only minor indications that a talented filmmaker was
behind this ignoble project.

This was supposed to be part of a
four film work by the director: with Scenes from a Parallel Life
(Noroît
(1976) and Duelle
(1976) already
completed. But investors at The Centre National de la
Cinématographie backed out and a
despondent Rivette sulked that he only reached half of
the intended films for the project. But Rivette made
this third film by raising just enough money to get it
completed. When the shoot went on for too long Schneider
split before the finale and was replaced by Rivette
regular Hermine
Karaghuez, and Dallesandro resorted to heavy
drug use--which failed to improve his previous wooden
acting. The oddball maniacal pic leaves us some
breathtaking scenes and its experimental filmmaking
techniques might interest Rivette fans or film scholars,
all others be warned that this is a tough one to sit
through after the first half-hour.